Music

Neon Trees Talk Teenage Romance

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Neon Trees front man Tyler Glenn revealed that his long-lost high school romance made its mark on the band’s latest album, Picture Show.

On the moody “Close to You,” Glenn sings “I still got my eyes on you baby/I wanna be close to you.”

He shares the inspiration behind the track, saying, “I drifted back to being 17 with my high school girlfriend in her parents’ house when we weren’t supposed to be in there because they were out of town. And we were dancing, and we used to buy strobe lights from party city and we put ‘em on and we were dancing – I forget what we were dancing to. But basically that song was written about that time when me and her first started dating and realizing we were in love with each other. So, that song is about that intimate, maybe, 90 minutes of my life.”

He also explains how his experience writing the song added to his nostalgic state of mind.

“I wrote it over the course of a European into an Australian tour and so when I hear the song I think of the places wrote it, like in Spain, in Sydney. I had fallen off the stage in Holland and cracked my front teeth and so I waited to go back to America to fix my grill so I was sort of in this weird mentality where I thought my mouth was always going to be effed up. I was in sort of a very lonely place.”

Guitarist Chris Allen also explains how he achieved the unconventional melodies that compliment Glenn’s emotional lyrics on the track.

“I had a lot of fun experimenting with some tones on that one. I was determined to order these metal picks on line. Well, first I searched every guitar shop in the L.A.-area. I ended up trying an aluminum pick, and the tone just shows it. You couldn’t get that sound with anything else.”